Ancillary Sword

Pros: fascinating characters, interesting narrative approach, develops new world-building aspects

Cons: character driven

A week after the events of Ancillary Justice, Breq, now fleet captain and assigned to Mercy of Kalr, departs on Anaander Mianaai's orders to Athoek to make sure the system stays safe. In addition to her experienced lieutenants, Seivarden and Ekalu (of the Kalr), she has a new 17 year old one, Tisarwat, to train. Once they arrive at the station, they find a suspicious captain, disturbed by the lack of communication after the attack on Omaugh Palace and the destruction of several gates, racial tensions, and minor issues covering larger problems that need to be addressed.

As with the first book, the real aspect of interest is in how Breq sees the world. You don't get flash backs to when she was Justice of Toren, though that's often in her thoughts, instead you get her trying to keep up with frequent run downs of the sort of information she would have have had instantaneously as a ship, sent to her by her ship, Mercy of Kalr. It's an interesting way of seeing things, and allows Breq to pretend she's still one part of a larger whole while also being a narrative means of showing the reader what's happening in places outside Breq's physical sphere. There is a plot, but in many ways this feels like a character driven novel because Breq's presence is so overpowering. If you don't like her unique way of seeing the world, you won't enjoy this book.

Breq comes across as a tough as nails captain. Sometimes she's too tough, pushing her crew beyond what she should, something I suspected would eventually cause her problems, but her extensive experience means she's able to pull back at just the right moment. Even knowing what Breq was trying to do, I thought she was too hard on Tisarwat at times. Not only had the lieutenant been through a traumatic experience with little recovery time, she's given little to no positive reinforcement when she does things right. So while Tisarwat was an interesting character, seeing her through Breq's eyes made her less sympathetic than she probably deserved to be. It was fun seeing her grow up and mature.

I was a little surprised at the number of secrets she kept from her crew, her true identity as Justice of Toren and what happened with Tisarwat being the main ones, but it does make sense that the crew might balk at such things, so keeping them secret probably made sense.

There's more information about how the military works and there's a unique supporting cast. I enjoyed learning more about the military and political politics, both between the ships but also how it applies to a station and planet once they get to Athoek. I'm hoping we learn more about the Presger in the next book. What little was revealed here merely whet the appetite.

I really wanted to love Ancillary Sword, but sadly it just didn't click for me. It wasn't for lack of effort. In a way it was frustrating because Leckie's prose can be quite amazing at times.

The first book, Ancillary Justice, was universally beloved and won just about every scifi book award that there was to win. I understood what people saw in it, but there was so much in the book that frustrated me. Leckie showed her skills as a tremendous world builder (as everyone has noted), but sadly the characters were a bit lacking.

Leckie set out to fix that in the second book by having it mostly a long character study of Justice of Toren/Breq, the corpse AI that lost her ship that served as her central hub sentenced to a life in a human body. Her tale of vengeance led to a climatic face off in the first book and this one picked up directly after and at times it was hard to grasp where the plot was heading.

It wasn't due to depth or complication but instead because of the pacing and what the main focus of the book turned out to be. Leckie has proven to be a slow starter, in fact, I almost put down Ancillary Justice until I got to about the 40% mark when it picked up, with Ancillary Sword it probably didn't pick up until somewhere near the realm of 70%.

Her prose can be great, like I said, but at other times frustrating. Why is everyone gesturing? The word “gesture” appears in some form what feels like every page on both books and while I can understand that Breq is an AI who views things a bit differently, she seems to have a superior intellect and I'm sure can break down these gestures into more depth than just “she gestured agreement” and so forth.

Most of the book felt like something that most authors would have summed up briefly within a a few pages, a few chapters at most. Instead most of our time is spent with Breq seeing how the common people live. It was a valuable thing for the character to experience in her quest, undoubtedly, but the presentation and the events felt rather uninspired. There was also the fact that the reader was given no real insight as to what Breq was after throughout most of the journey.

There was similar insight missing from the first book early on, which made it such a slog to endure. I've seen a lot of people saying “well, I didn't understand it, but maybe I'm just smart enough.” Readers have to be unafraid to take authors to task on things like this. Ancillary Justice wasn't confusing because it flew over the readers' heads, but because there wasn't enough detail or insight into the characters to get the reader invested. This book was similar to that.

So if AJ was missing character development and had a fascinating plot, AS was missing the plot and saw a lot of character development. Hopefully Ancillary Mercy pieces it all together because I truly want to love these books and Leckie's writing, but there are just a few little things that make these books more of a chore than they should be.

Imagine you write a novel that wins basically every major sci-fi award in English speaking world. (Not that awards actually matter.) Partly because you write great orwellian novel from the future with original spin of AI being the main character in human skin fighting an all knowing other AI that is simultaneously at war with itself. Partly, I fear, because you inject your woke ideology into it but it's not overhanded and it's enjoyable even for someone like me so activists prop it up while normies don't mind.

Now imagine you throw that original worldbuilding out the window and write a sequel confined into one space station and tea plantation on the planet. Promise of epic space opera? Nowhere to be found. Promise of over the top woke social talking points? Everywhere.

There's more characters in here so the inability to differentiate gender, to imagine what the characters look like is almost impossible at this point. Author uses only feminine pronouns so reader has no idea who is male or female. Additionally, it was established in the first book that AI with IQ probably somewhere above 300 can't tell a difference between men and women... On top of that literally everybody, even characters on ships who are from various parts of the galaxy are all “dark skinned or darker skinned”. Tea plantation is a metaphor for cotton plantations and workers are slaves in all but name.

But even despite all of that I'd be okay with the book if it moved plot forward or if characterization of anybody, ANYBODY was better. But this is a filler, a spin-off. Maybe it should've been the first act of Justice's sequel instead of whole book. It doesn't even much feel like a setup for sequel until the last 20 pages.

There's no characterization of Breq's crew. They are all human but since previous captain liked them to act like ancillaries (ship's AI in human bodies) they act like them. They're robots without a hint of character except for Kalr Five's love of porcelain, lol. And near the end they say they like living like this. Has the author ever talked to a soldier? To another human being for that matter? Is she in love with Star Trek's Borgs?
I guess that's how author masks her biggest weakness because character's from space station and plantation are also just as flat.

I fear the conclusion in Mercy won't conclude anything if it's going to be in any way similar to this book. If I ever even bother to waste more time on this series.

I loved Ancillary Justice SO much and then I desperately needed to take on the rest of the series IMMEDIATELY. I kind of regret rushing through the series rather than savoring it. Nonetheless, I think Sword, while struggling a little with the pacing problems of a middle book in a trilogy, brought a lot of unique strengths to the series. I particularly liked Leckie's take on colonialism. I felt like she captured the ways in which SciFi can be a lens to reflect back on the issues of today, without weakening her own imaginative and unique setting. This is definitely a smaller book than Ancillary Justice – more focused on Breq and her crew, their interpersonal relationships, contrasted with the interpersonal relationships of those on the station and downwell and how those ultimately result in systemic flaws. I liked to have this lull in the series to really bathe in Leckie's universe and its social rules.

I think it's more of a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

This audiobook took me so long to listen to, I thought I would forget what happened in the beginning by the time I reached the end. But surprisingly, it didn't feel that way as I kept getting through it bit by bit for more than a month.

As there was a lot of tension and buildup in the first book, I assumed it would continue in this sequel as well. But the author took a very different turn here and while I was surprised, I think it was an interesting change. After such an explosive finale, the author shifts the proceedings to a new station and we get to see the dynamics and tensions of different peoples in this place. Through Breq's unique perspective and the introduction of more characters, the author gives us a thought provoking commentary on racism, xenophobia, systemic discrimination, as well as human trafficking and indentured servitude. We also get to see lots of culture of this new station and how the formalities between people of different hierarchies is such an important part of life and daily work. While there is some action towards the end, it's ultimately a slice of life story with a space opera and imperial politics setting.

In the end, I think this turned out to be a quiet and enjoyable story despite the delays in my reading. The audiobook is narrated very well and I liked getting to know how to pronounce all the names as well as the lovely songs. This is a nice series if you are looking for a character driven political story with important themes, but is told in a slow and quiet way. But it's definitely not the right choice if you want something more action packed in your sci-fi.

After enjoying the first book in the series, I dove into the 2nd. It didn't hurt that it was nominated for another Hugo award, on a number of short lists for great sci-fi. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as interesting as the first in the series. Many of the concepts explored in the first one were put aside to tackle a case of discrimination on a subset of people on a space station. Still great sci-fi, but I didn't get the same level of enjoyment out of the story as the first one – which might have set my expectations a little bit too high.

I feel REALLY conflicted about this book. I enjoyed it through and through, but it was slow as hell and there really isn't much payoff to the many story threads.

I'll probably read the third in the series because I love the world that Leckie has created, but this book was a swing and a miss for me.

Random thoughts:

- A main protagonist I liked is still around but... Wasn't really used in the plot much at all?

- This book is all about how imperialism is bad but it also leans on the “white saviour” trope HEAVILY. Braq is just too perfect and solves everyone's problems. Blah.

- What was the point of this book? It really felt like a long setup for a final chapter in the trilogy.

- I honestly like all the tea drinking and politics but it's a bit much at times.

- “Baby lieutenants” are aborable little imperialists.

This was a fun enough ride, but I also constantly felt like I was just skating on the surface of some deeper meaning that I'm too dense to decipher, and therefore also just skating on the brink of some deeper appreciation and enjoyment of it.

The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie is spectacular. The core ideas and premise in it may not be a breath of fresh air by this point, but the way Leckie constructs those tropes from ground-up and pushes them to its limit will certainly make the books in the series stand out in one's mind, no matter how many iterations of the same tropes one has read before.

But there's also a denseness to Leckie's writing that is not the easiest to parse. It requires the utmost attention as you read it, maybe even demands re-reads to fully understand the intricacies of the world Leckie is building and the nuances of the character interactions here. That is probably why I felt like I was skating on the surface all the time, even more so than I did with the first book.

While the first book, Ancillary Justice, was also dense, it had a lot more action going on so there were moments of re-grouping where we had time to catch up with the information given to us. In this one though, there isn't really that much movement happening. Our ship protagonist, Breq, has now been made Fleet Captain by the Lord of the Radch herself. In such a position, she makes her way towards Athoek station ostensibly to protect that system as a delegate of the Radch. She doesn't tell people that it is also the hometown of her late captain, Lt. Awn, where she intends to find Awn's sister to make amends. Along the way, Breq makes friends and enemies amongst the various races living on Athoek, and serves justice as she understands it.

There is a lot more politics about imperialism here, and the friction not only between colonizer (Radchaai) and the colonized races, but also the friction between colonized races, depending on how closely they have formed alliances with the Radchaai and therefore have moved up the socioeconomic hierarchy. It was all reminiscent (and perhaps deliberately so) of British imperialism and therefore of my own Commonwealth country and history, something that I honestly did not expect from this book. I appreciated the thoughts and discussion the book had on whether Breq's so-called justice was futile and in fact detrimental no matter how well-intentioned.

Overall though, this book was okay. It's a hard one for me to rate. I enjoyed it, but at the same time it didn't blow my mind - and yet, I'm not even sure if I just need to read it closer and harder. I feel like I missed a few points here, and I keep thinking it's entirely my fault for not having paid enough attention while reading, given how popular and beloved this book is. Definitely will read the next one though.

Oh, Ann Leckie. You are so very very good. Ancillary Justice was one of those mind-blowing books that changed the way I looked at the world around me. Ancillary Sword continues the tale, and while my brain is now better adapted to deal with the twists and turns it is forced to make, that doesn't make the style any less interesting to read. I loved being with Breq again and learning a little more about what life as an AI is like. Moving Breq into a position of power makes the book very different from A.J. and lets us see the character in a new light.

If I have any complaints, it's that we didn't get enough time with Breq and Seivarden together. Actually, not enough Seivarden at all. I really enjoyed Breq having to give Seivarden The Sex Talk concerning ancillaries as well as Seivarden's dashing Han Solo style rescue at the end. I could have used a lot more of the Buddy Drama dynamic and the humor it always provides in this book.

The actual plot is a political thriller, but not as interesting as the character exploration and cultural immersion which is really what I'm in this series for in the first place. The Radch really reminds me of my time in Japan with the emphasis on tradition, the necessity of having good tea sets to impress company, and the social stratification. It's an impressive world and one I just don't get tired of learning about through Breq's distinctly unimpressed eyes.

I can't wait for Ancillary Mercy to come out and will definitely be continuing this series. Fans of science fiction with a psychological bent should also get into this amazing soon to be trilogy.

I liked Ancillary Justice, so to feel the second novel in the series upping the ante was pretty fun as a reader. I think one of the most interesting plot points of this part of the trilogy is how Breq's identity as an ancillary (i.e., non-human-but-made-from-a-murdered-human AI; this isn't a spoiler alert as that's clear from from the first novel) gives them passing privilege among humans, with the downside passing always also includes: hearing in an even more unfiltered manner how clearly and easily humans distinguish between themselves and other (read: lesser) life forms. Breq also struggles with themes about what privacy and consent mean in a hyper-connected world, and those around her and under her command wrestle with whether individuals have the power for change in vast, slow moving, inequitable systems. There's a quote from a review of the front of the book that refers to the trilogy as a “space opera,” and opera doesn't speak to me personally, usually, but I get what they mean: thematically, the scope of this trilogy really feels like what it means to be a person (human or otherwise) in the world.

The second book in the trilogy is not quite as good as the first one, largely because the plot moves a little too slowly for much of its length. It's effectively a prolonged piece of scene-setting with the main events all squeezed into the last 20% or so... which couldn't be said of the first book. Having said that, the scene-setting is good, and is really the main point of it. This time, the story is set entirely within the Radch, so that mostly what we're seeing is an examination of their culture, with both its strengths and weaknesses - in particular, there's a strong critique of well-intentioned imperialism.

The fact that we don't leave the Empire also means that the biological sex of most of the characters is even less clear than before. Mostly, this doesn't matter, but there's a nice twist towards the end where one of the few characters that I had thought of as clearly being a particular sex turned out to be the other, forcing me to evaluate why I'd felt that way about them. You couldn't do that sort of thing in a story written in regular, gendered, English (or in a video format).

Once the plot finally gets somewhere, the result is also entertaining, with some dramatic denouements and moments of action. Perhaps it only scrapes the full four stars, being a little bit too leisurely in places, but it's certainly both interesting and memorable.

I want to start off by saying I liked this book. I read it in about a day and a half, which is pretty normal for me. However, I loved Ancillary Justice. I have read Justice twice now, and I am sure I will read it again in the future. It truly deserved all of the awards it won,

Sword pulled me from page to page as a good space opera should, but it didn't quite stick with me the way that Justice did, and I have put off writing this review until I could figure out. And I think that I finally know what struck me the wrong way. Before I get to that I want to talk about the things that I liked, because as I said, this is a good book. I liked is Tisarwat. I love the idea of her needing to re- find her identity after being briefly taken over by the multibodied Anaander Mianaai. She is no longer who she originally was, and she is no longer Anaander Mianaai, but some of both. Part of what makes her interesting, I think, is that her experience is really not that alien to us. I think most of us have probably had at least one experience where our worldview, or personal narrative has been challenged or broken in some way. And after the shock wears off, the only thing you can do is figure out how to move on, often reconstructing your own identity in some way. I think Anne is doing a great job of exploring this with Tisarwat.

Others have commented that Sword suffers from “middle book syndrome”, and while that may be true, I felt like the whole plot is really a side quest rather than a middle book. The main threads left unresolved from Justice dealt with Anaander's war with herself, the Presger, and for Breq, contacting Awn's younger sibling. Very little of this was dealt with or expanded upon. I was expecting the complexity of all of these three plots to increase substantially so that they could be resolved in the final book. Instead, what I get was a story that seemed really more about describing the abominable sharecropping practices of the reconstruction era South. Not that the story was poorly written, or wasn't a good story to tell, its just that it was a left turn, and in a lot of ways did not fulfill the expectations that were set up in the first book.

We did get a few tidbits however, and I am looking forward to the third book, and hopefully a return to the main story threads. Anyway, in summary, I think it was a good story, I just didn't necessarily think it was a good sequel.

Deel twee van de Imperial Radch-trilogie, en even in één adem uitgelezen als het eerste deel.

De wereld wordt hier en daar een beetje uitgediept, en de personages worden zéker meerdimensioneler, maar het blijft nog allemaal zeer op de vlakte qua, euh, Weltanschauung: de armen worden uitgebuit, slechte klassenmaatschappij is slecht, yada yada.

Goede punten voor het detectiveverhaal, slechte punten dat het allemaal zo eenvoudig en snel opgelost raakt. Goede punten voor het hoofdpersonage, dat worstelt met haar eigen niet-mens-zijn, slechte punten voor het hoofdpersonage, dat té schrikwekkend goed is in alles wat ze doet.

Goede punten voor de slechterik, die letterlijk zowel de goede als de slechte en omgekeerd is, en dat zowel voor als tegen haar zijn, verliezen is. Goede punten voor de nevenpersonages, ook de vers geïntroduceerde naar het einde van het boek.

En goede punten voor de aanzet tot het vervolg, en hopen dat het een degelijk einde heeft. Uitkijken naar Ancillary Mercy, voorzien voor 16 oktober 2015.

It's been quite a while since I read Ancillary Justice. I'm not sure why I waited so long as I loved Justice.

I loved this one too. One of the fascinating ideas is that Breq, when she was Justice of Toren was a colonizer. Seeing how she deals with that when she meets people who have been colonised by the Radchaai gives much food for thought.

[b:Ancillary Justice 17333324 Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) Ann Leckie https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1397215917s/17333324.jpg 24064628] is an impossible act to follow. Leckie is a talented writer, deeply passionate about issues of justice and fairness, and here she explores racism and privilege. Well done, and her continuing development of gender & personality topics are thoughtful, but it's hard not to be disappointed after Justice.

After enjoying the first book in the series, I dove into the 2nd. It didn't hurt that it was nominated for another Hugo award, on a number of short lists for great sci-fi. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as interesting as the first in the series. Many of the concepts explored in the first one were put aside to tackle a case of discrimination on a subset of people on a space station. Still great sci-fi, but I didn't get the same level of enjoyment out of the story as the first one – which might have set my expectations a little bit too high.